In point of fact, this remarkable book never mentions the old religion at all. This is a very singular--even an unique--method of treatment. There is no question of the common lines of research: not one of them is followed. The author begins, and he goes on, with the assumption that there is no religion at all which need be considered. On the broad downs the only bell ever heard is the distant sheep-bell, the only hymn of praise is the song of the lark. He has wandered among these lonely hills until he has forgotten the village church and all that he was taught there. Everything has clean escaped his memory. It is not that the old teaching no longer guides his conduct; the old teaching no longer lives at all in his mind. He has communed so much with Nature that he is intoxicated with her fulness and her beauty. Nothing else seems worth thinking of. He lies upon the turf and feels the embrace of the great round world. "I used to lie down in solitary corners at full length on my back, so as to feel the embrace of the earth. The grass stood high above me, and the shadows of the tree-branches danced on my face. I looked up at the sky, with half-closed eyes to bear the dazzling light. Bees buzzed over, sometimes a butterfly passed, there was a hum in the air, greenfinches sang in the hedge. Gradually entering into the intense life of the summer days--a life which burned around as if every grass-blade and leaf were a torch--I came to feel the long-drawn life of the earth back into the dimmest past, while the sun of the moment was warm on me.... This sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness." Again, he says that, wandering alone, he spoke in his soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight: "I thought of the earth's firmness--I felt it bear me up; through the grassy couch there came an influence as if I could feel the great earth speaking to me. I thought of the wandering air--its pureness, which is its beauty; the air touched me and gave me something of itself. I spoke to the sea, though so far, in my mind I saw it, green at the rim of the earth and blue in deeper ocean; I desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory."